Media offices for 25 hospitals responded to our questions

Logging at unit-level: While all respondents said formal complaints to their patient relations office are logged, 20 of 25 said front-line health-care staff do not log complaints addressed at the point of care/ moment it occurs. Some of these respondents said, however, that front-line staff can direct unresolved concerns to management or the patient relations department where they could be logged. Five respondents said they do log complaints at the unit level.

Logging category for racism: 15 of 25 said they don’t have a specific category for racism or discrimination in their complaint trends tracking. Seven respondents said they did track racism or discrimination as a category for trends tracking. Three respondents did not respond to this question despite repeated requests by Surviving Hate.

Evaluation: Eight of 25 of health authorities and hospitals Surviving Hate spoke to said they do not have a formal internal evaluation of their complaints process. Fifteen respondents said they do evaluate their process periodically. Two respondents did not respond to this question despite repeated requests by Surviving Hate.

Training: 22 of 25 said they have cultural safety training or training on racism for staff, including those working in the patient relations department. It’s important to note that while it’s available, it isn’t always mandatory for staff. Two respondents said they did not have cultural safety training or training on racism for staff. One respondent did not respond to this question despite repeated requests by Surviving Hate.

Representative/support: 21 of 25 have at least one representative (like a patient navigator or advocate) for Indigenous patients who can assist them with navigating the hospital system as a whole — including the complaints process. Three respondents said they don’t have such a representative available. One respondent did not answer this question despite repeated requests by Surviving Hate.

How the hospitals were chosen

We chose hospitals based on Surviving Hate’s database of over 150 incidents of Indigenous-specific racism in hospitals, which reflected some hospitals having a higher number of publicly reported incidents than others. We also considered hospitals based on where Indigenous communities are located, and where prominent hospitals are in those regions. Some hospitals were chosen if there was a noted reputation of racism/discrimination expressed by surrounding communities.

This survey serves as only a snapshot of hundreds of hospitals across Canada. The Surviving Hate team contacted 28 health authorities and hospitals across the country, representative of each province and territory. The offices representing 25 hospitals responded in part or in whole to the queries sent. There were hospitals that did not respond to any questions or only responded to part of the questions sent despite repeated requests by Surviving Hate.

The team asked questions about how patient complaints are tracked for trends, at what stage complaints are logged, how the process is evaluated, whether their office tracks racism as a category for complaints, whether they have cultural sensitivity training, and whether they have a representative who can assist Indigenous patients and families through the complaints process.

*Note: The Surviving Hate team categorized hospitals as not logging complaints at the unit level when their direct response was “no” or when they said only their patient relations department logs complaints for trends tracking.

This includes when they told us staff can direct a patient or concern to higher management or the patient relations department, where it will be logged. It also includes when a respondent said patient concerns are placed in a patient’s chart and when not handled satisfactorily by unit level staff, staff recommend they go to the patient relations office, where they will be logged in their patient relations database.

When Surviving Hate also contacted the human rights commission, college of physicians and college of nurses from each province and territory, the team also found there is little to no tracking of complaints of racism or discrimination in hospitals.

Please click here to link back to the main story and here for April's second installment in this series.

David Weisz is a data journalist and educator based in Toronto. David is currently exploring new ways to collaborate on data-driven storytelling as a co-founder and director of Humber College's StoryLab. He also runs Data Driven, Canada's premier data-journalism event.